In the 1960s, Yale University researcher Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments that soon became famous—or notorious, depending on one’s point of view. Each student participant was instructed to administer electrical shocks to another participant who was sequestered in an adjacent room. As the voltage and apparent risk increased to dangerous levels, most participants obeyed the researcher’s instructions to continue administering shocks, despite their misgivings. The study made headlines about our readiness to obey authority.

However, the experiments became notorious for something else. Milgram did not immediately reveal to the participants that the shocks were not real. Had he done so, he feared he would have been unable to recruit future naïve subjects. Some students left the experiment convinced they had hurt or even threatened the life of a fellow participant. Some complained directly to Milgram or to the university, and guilt and shame followed. The research funder and Milgram himself raised questions about distress that may have been felt by participants.

As a Macalester psychology student in the 1970s, I delivered shocks, too. In this case, the participants were rats. The laboratory began by drilling holes in rats’ skulls to insert electrodes into the medial forebrain bundle—a reward center in the brain. To hold their heads still, we used a stereotaxic device with bars inserted into the ear canals, one on each side. As I tightened the screws on the ear bars, I sensed something was wrong, and approached my professor.

“I think I just broke her eardrums,” I said.

“That’s right,” my professor said. “That is where you want to be.”

“But isn’t that going to hurt?” I asked. “She wasn’t going to listen to her stereo in the morning,” he replied.

What struck me was that I had known the professor to be a kind man. I knew him reasonably well, and this remark seemed completely out of character. I took a deep breath and continued with the experiment.

This was not my first set of psychology experiments. In “Introduction to Psychology,” we walked through the principles of operant conditioning—showing that we could “shape” animals’ behavior. We could get rats to turn in circles or do just about anything we wanted because animals deprived of water will do anything to get the water they need. We did not see—or even talk about—what happened to the animals beforehand or how they were killed afterward.

When I began medical school in 1976, animal laboratories were again part of the curriculum, this time using dogs. But by then I had the presence of mind to say no. I knew I could learn the principles of physiology without killing. Happily, those medical school animal laboratories have long since been abandoned by every medical school in the United States (U.S.) and Canada. Yes, some schools were slow to change, like Johns Hopkins University, where a spokesperson lamely asserted that killing an animal helps students appreciate the “sanctity of life.” But there, too, the animal labs were eventually abandoned. The same is true of the rat laboratories in most psychology departments across the U.S., including Minnesota. Macalester is an exception, for now. It continues to promote these exercises.

So, how do students feel about it? Over the years, researchers have surveyed student attitudes about animal laboratories. Invariably, there are students who wish not to participate. What happens to them?

A recent article in The Mac Weekly cited the psychology department saying “students have the ability to choose not to participate in labs involving animals.” That sounds encouraging. Except that the article also described the rat labs as an “irreplaceable experience that informs their future studies,” and “something we consider essential preparation for future scientists and informed citizens alike.”

Stop.

How are compassionate students supposed to react to this? If they “choose not to participate,” they are missing something the department called “irreplaceable” and “essential preparation for future scientists.” Needless to say, the laboratories are none of these things, which is why the vast majority of schools dropped them long ago. Putting a rat in a box does not make one a better student or smarter scientist, let alone an informed citizen.

But students worry about grades and academic standing. Even those with a real heart for animals will be nervous when their department tells them that a decision to not participate could risk their future careers. There is simply no way that a department can host animal laboratories without the implication that participation is expected.

Unlike Milgram’s fake shocks, the harm to animals used in educational laboratories is real, with privation and confinement beforehand and killing later. There is no possibility of reassuring students afterward.

I feel sorry for the doomed animals, the reluctant students, and the faculty and administrative staff who, I suspect, do not really believe that rat labs are much more than a curricular relic, like the dog labs in medical school. Students who feel pushed into participating and faculty who feel obligated to defend out-of-date exercises are in a tough spot. I wish them the fortitude to just say no.

Like Milgram’s participants, Mac students who wish not to cause harm may find themselves struggling about obedience to authority. If we rethink what we are doing to animals, students and faculty, we will likely arrive at the same conclusion as other colleges and universities. The sooner, the better.

In advance of my 50th reunion, I brought to President Suzanne Rivera’s attention the fact that the College is still using live animals in psychology classes, despite the College’s stated position that “ethical principles are applied at the highest possible level in any animal use,” which, of course, should mean using nonanimal alternatives whenever possible. Rivera met with me and, encouragingly, included Vice Provost Paul Overvoorde in the meeting and asked me to follow up with him. I did, sharing details on the available alternatives, assuming they would soon be put to use. And I set about raising money for the reunion and donated personally to support the College. To my surprise, however, Rivera abruptly cut off communication and directed me to the College’s litigation attorney. The discussion of ethics, alternatives and sparing animals’ lives was abruptly halted, apparently having been misinterpreted as an attack on academic freedom.

When conversation is impossible, conflict is inevitable. There was little to be done except to ask for my donation back, given that the College was not actually applying ethics at all, let alone at the highest level, and I brought the matter to Hennepin County District Court. I soon heard from former students, including two Mac students assigned to the psychology animal lab who harbored the trauma of seeing what the animals actually went through out of the sight of students. The court dismissed the case on Oct. 28 and, for now, there is no barrier to students being not-so-subtly “encouraged” to participate in animal laboratories. While I cannot recover the money I raised for the College or the donation I made personally, of far greater importance is what the animals go through, what conscientious students with a heart for animals may be pushed to participate in, and the backward science ossifying at the College.

Like Milgram’s experiments, Macalester’s psychology laboratories convey disturbing truths about the humans who run them and what they are willing to push students to do. But Milgram finally stopped. Mac can, too

Neal Barnard, Macalester Class of 1975